I am going to list a number of fonts below. What I am hoping some of you will do is send me a screenshot of the fonts as viewed from your computer with the details ie: Windows Vista Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080915 Firefox/2.0.0.17 Flock/1.2.6 You can get that from Help and About in your browser.

Thanks

Arial

Verdana

Times New Roman

Georgia

Monotype Corsiva

Cataneo

Euphemia

Impact

Magneto

Eras Light ITC

AvantGarde Bk BT

Bradley Hand ITC

John Handy LET

Papyrus

I have chosen a few fonts that most of you will not have seen or have on your computers. Someone told me that Web 2.0 got fonts right, so lets see if they solved the issue of people not having a font available. The image below is what I see. Just between the two Computers here we have 4 that are broken.

I needed to design a desk calendar for a customer and started doing a few experiments. We are printing 500 of these for HIQ in Nelspruit. I thought about doing a few for myself as well. So the experimentation had to do with the paper grammage.

The tent fold calendar assembled

You can design your own Calendar for your desk by doing the following. You will need a printer that can print borderless on A4 or you will need to make your calendar a little smaller. 170g card works but is rather light and flimsy, 300g card works best. The problem with 300g card is that most printers are not able to handle that thickness board.

Design Layout

Basically the tent fold calendar is an A4 page with 3 folds and glued at the one end. I made mine by doing the design in four parts. two 105mm panels, a 20mm glue lip and the balance of the card as the third panel.

I did a 6 month calendar on either side and surrounded them by graphics, including logos.  I then added all the public holidays and a 2010 calender to the bottom panel. You could leave this blank but I figured a calendar for the following year and a list of public holidays and school terms would be more useful.

I printed this on 170g photo paper, cut and folded them. As you can see they work. The ones we are having done by the printers will be on 300g board.

For those of you that are interested here are the prices for printing and artwork.

Sheet print

Print up to 50 at  R 39.91 each (excludes artwork) add R 300.00 once (This is on 170g photoboard)

Print 100   R 2390.00 Lithoprinted on 300g Board artwork included

Print 200  R 2740.00 Lithoprinted on 300g Board artwork included

Print 500 R 3420.00 Lithoprinted on 300g Board artwork included

5% discount for payment with order.

Somewhere along the way I read a book about design for non designers. I would give you the ISBN and all that stuff except I can’t remember where I put the book. Mind you it was a few years ago that I bought the book. The main concept was CRAP design.

Contrast is not just about Colour but fonts and more. When designing something you need to look at the contrasts, The harder the contrast the better. If you are using too many fonts on a page, you are diluting the power of contrast. Think about it. If you use two different script fonts that are similar, Are you creating a contrast or are you diluting your message?

Repitition is about repeating the design elements. Repetition gives the design flow and focus. It also makes it more pleasing to the eye. Repeating a header font with a contrasting content font makes the document easier to digest.

Alignment is very important. Align your design elements so that they make sense. Use alignment to create focus and to give the document substance. Alignment allows you to steer the person where you want them to go.

Position allows you to group ideas and thought. If your design elements are in the wrong position it can make or break your document.

I will discuss each of these elements of design in more detail. One item at a time so as to make them easy to understand. I will draw pictures and show you how just one of these elements will improve your design and how using all four you can create dynamite newsletters, documents and even adverts.

I have been visiting all my friend and clients, just checking out what they are up to. I started with Bailey Schneider who’s blog is taking shape very nicely. Now that Bailey has got the gallery and uploading video sorted her blog is looking better and better with every post she does. http://baileyschneider.co.za

Next I popped over to see what was being done at http://retirementstyle.co.za and am pleased to report that older people are staying younger with all sorts of pills and potions.

I popped in to visit Jock at Caravan Time. I see you can now try a caravan at very reasonable rates for 3 days or more. In fact if you are thinking about going caravaning, a chat to Jock who has been caravaning for many years may just be the answer.

http://expensivemistakescheapthrills.co.za/ is the home of EXMI who talks about life, sex, her rug rat and so much more. Be prepared to see how the other half lives if you do go look.

If you want to know about Haedong Kumdo, the Korean Sword martial arts or Tang so do, Visit Zander and Awie at http://wolvesmartialarts.co.za.

We are creating corporate calendars this year using photgraphs and digital art created by Guy and Melanie from Mpumalanga Photographer. You have a choice of photos from our library, or we can take photos specially for your calendar. We have two basic style layouts which you can see here.

Style 1

Style 2

For pricing call Guy or Melanie on 013 745 8337

Bailey Schneider of 94.7 fm fame to launch her own website. We were chosen to create the site and between Bailey and Guy decided on the pink and black theme that can be viewed at Bailey Schneider’s site.

Bailey and Guy handled all discussions by email and telephone. The designer and the client have not physically met. Bailey says on her own site

“I am extremely excited about this new website. I have been wanting to create one for a while now, but I’ve never gotten around to it! I’d like to give a HUGE thank you to Guy McLaren who has created this for me. I truly appreciate your effort and how quickly and professionally you were able to do this for me! THANK YOU!!”

The theme will be completed this morning and Bailey will have all the information that she needs to use and update her site by this afternoon. The whole process was started on Thursday with a phone call from Bailey.

A telephonic quote was accepted, A written quote was sent later in the day. The domain was registered and the work started on Friday morning. Bailey was decisive about what she wanted making it a whole lot easier to get the design completed in a very short time.

To get your own site call Guy on 013 745 8337.

As I have been asked to quote for the website of a retirement village in Mpumalanga I thought I would write an article to test the results I would get for Retirement Village from Google. The facts are that for a broad match there are 991 000 competing pages for the term, Internationally there are almost as many for a close match search. South Africa however has only 91000 competing pages for retirement Village.

Can we rank for retirement Village

In order to make the article honest I am doing a little research on Retirement homes. The top links in Google.co.za include a Hibiscus coast and a Pretoria based retirement village, the balance are estate agents and link sites. The top ten sites in google.com are not extremely well optimised for Retirement Village, so despite the obvious lack of favourable numbers. I might even have a chance at ranking for retirement Village.

Going about finding the Retirement Village

I promised 4 tips to finding a Retirement Village so I better deliver or you will think this article about Finding the perfect Retirement Village is a farce.

1. Decide where you want to stay and search for the Villages in that area as follows, Use quotation marks so that you do a close match search which should eliminate all the sites that are there just to catch you like this one. “Johannesburg Retirement Village” or “Nelspruit Retirement Village” I already know from my search that there are very few listings for either of those terms in fact nary a one for Nelspruit Retirement Village, so I am guessing if you search for Nelspruit Retirement Village you will find this site. Time for me to find some retirement Villages in the area and arrange a commission for your leads.

2. If the local area is not offering up any decent results try search for “Nelspruit retirement home” or “Cape Town Retirement home” Google if it finds no close match results may even offer you some broad match results.

3. Now you are really going to have to dig. Lets see if a Provincial search will give us any better results so lets try “Mpumalanga Retirement Village” or “Mpumalanga Retirement Home”

4. If that fails we are now going to have to scratch around the sandbox a little. Lets try “Retirement Home” OK that didn’t do much for us a few places in the Cape and some News articles.

Best designed websites

I have seen many of the best designed websites never appearing on the Google pages. Use of Shockwave Flash, Javascript and Ajax on a website may win awards, but do awards satisfy the business owners need for sales? I believe that website design not unlike the advertising industry has become yet another artistic masturbation forum. The sites are designed to impress web designers, advertising executives and win website design awards. Are best designed websites actually any good for a commerce oriented business?

Website design awards

Most website design awards are awarded for outrageous and interesting design, The efficacy of the website is rarely taken into account when the ajudication takes place. It is my belief that web designers and advertising executives are not really the right place to go to for advice about business. Do these people even understand that sales = profits and that this is the lifeblood of a business.

Best websites

Here at guymclaren.com we know that the best websites are those that give results. Rather than spending your budget on magnificent design layouts and impressive artwork, we advise using the budget to get results. There is no denying that a pretty website looks good. There is no denying that a best website needs an element of design. Unlike print design there are really only three good layouts for a website. Navigation on top, navigation left or navigation right.

Website design

I have been designing websites since 1996, I tried all the artistic onanism and even won a website design award or three in the past. I was involved in the layout and setup of many websites including Richard Branson’s Virgin net. With all my experience comes the realisation that KISS is still the right principle. CSS can make the site appear a little more interesting and that is why we use elements of CSS. CSS can also make a site top heavy and slow to download and that is why we avoid many elements of CSS.

Flash and animated graphics

All these do for websites is add the so called wow factor and destroy the speed and efficacy of a site. Animated graphics are preferable to flash, but should be avoided if possible. When adding a flash movie to your content give the visitor the choice of activating it or not. Many people when faced with the downloading bar of a flash intro, just move on to another website. Do you really want possible clients going to the opposition?

Here is the concept, tell me if you like. Theme design Grey notebook

Version 3

Version 2

We have launched two new Word Press themes on webTECH and will be launching more very soon. The first theme is called African Lion Safari.

The second is the Martial arts theme. Both are based on the same Stylesheet yet differ quite remarkably.

Martial Arts Wordpress theme

Get the full data from WordPress Themes on webTECH